Pauline Berikoff had pleaded not guilty to three counts of mischief, but she was convicted on one count after four RCMP officers testified they saw her burn the clothing on Wednesday.

Berikoff had told police she was supporting two Freedomite women on a hunger strike in Matsqui prison. She said she wanted to join the women in jail.

NELSON, B.C. (CP) - A member of the Sons of Freedom who set clothing on fire at an RCMP detachment because she wanted to join two fellow Freedomites in prison was sentenced Friday to a year in jail.

Pauline Berikoff had pleaded not guilty to three counts of mischief, but she was convicted on one count after four RCMP officers testified they saw her burn the clothing on Wednesday.

She was carried into provincial court draped in a blanket on Thursday but was clothed during sentencing Friday.

However, four women who got permission from the judge to say a prayer stripped in the courtroom and were taken out.

Berikoff had told police she was supporting two Freedomite women on a hunger strike in Matsqui prison. She said she wanted to join the women in jail.

But Berikoff will spend her prison term at the Lower Mainland Regional Correctional Centre in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby.

Tina Jmaeff, 63, and Mary Braun, 67, have not eaten for more than 100 days. They are both serving eight-year terms for arson.

Court was told Friday that Berikoff has been convicted of arson or conspiracy to commit arson six times in the last 10 years.

Earlier this month, Berikoff burned down her house in Gilpin, a Freedomite community in southeastern British Columbia. She said then she wanted to be charged but no charges were laid.

The Freedomites are a radical group of zealots who left mainstream Doukhobors in 1902. They use arson and public nudity to show their rejection of wealth.